THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя

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СКАЧАТЬ on the sofa and burst out sobbing. Madeleine, surprised and terrified, thought that he had got to know all. She rose up in a tremble.

      The young man was still weeping, with his face buried in his hands, and shaking with the paroxysms of despair. At last, he held out his arms to his mistress, and said to her in a choking voice:

      “Comfort me, comfort me. Oh! how I suffer!” Madeleine went and sat down by his side, not daring to understand him, and asking herself if it was she who was making him weep like that. She forgot her own sufferings in the presence of a grief like his.

      “Tell me, what is the matter with you,” she asked her lover, as she took his hands in hers.

      He looked at her like one distracted.

      “I did not like to sob in the street,” he stammered through his tears. “I ran, I was choking — I wanted to get here — Let me be, it does me good, it comforts me — “ He wiped his tears, then he almost choked afresh and burst out weeping again.

      “My God! my God! I shall never see him again,” he murmured.

      The young woman thought she understood and was touched with pity. She drew William into her arms, kissed his forehead, wiped his tears, and soothed him with her brokenhearted gaze.

      “You have lost your father?” she asked him again.

      He made a sign of denial. Then he clasped his hands and in the meek voice of despair:

      “My poor James,” he said, seeming to address himself to a shadow seen only by himself; “my poor James, you will never love me more as you used to love me — I had forgotten you, I was not even thinking of you when you died.” At the name of James, Madeleine, who was still drying her lover’s tears, jumped up with a shudder. James dead! The news fell with a dull thud on her heart. She stood stunned, asking herself if it was not she who, without knowing it, had killed this young fellow to get rid of him.

      “You did not know him,” William went on, “I have never spoken to you of him, I think. I was ungrateful, our happiness made me forgetful — He was a jewel, he had a nature full of devotion. He was the only friend I had in this world. Before meeting you, I had only known one affection, it was his. You were the only beings that had opened your hearts to me. And I have lost him — “

      Here he was interrupted by a sob. He went on:

      “At school, they used to beat me, and it was he who came to my aid. He saved me from tears, he held out to me his friendship and protection, to me, who lived like a pariah in the contempt, in the derision of everybody. When I was a child, I worshipped him like a god; I would have fallen on my knees before him, had he asked for my prayers, I owed him so much. I would ask myself with such fervour how I could pay him, some day, my debt of gratitude? And I have let him die far away. I have not loved him enough, I feel it.”

      His emotion choked him again. After a short silence he continued:

      “And later on, what long days we passed together. We roamed the fields, hand in hand. I remember one morning we were searching for crawfish under the willows; he said to me, ‘William, there is only one good thing in this world, and it is friendship. Let us be devoted to one another, it will soothe us in after life.’ Poor dear fellow, he is gone, and I am alone. But he will live always in my soul — I have nobody but you left, Madeleine, I have lost my brother.” He sobbed again, and again held out his arms to the young woman, with a gesture of utter despair.

      She was in pain. The grief, the poignant regrets of William were causing her a singular feeling of rebellion; she could not hear from his month his passionate praise of James, without being tempted to exclaim: “Silence! this man has robbed you of your happiness, you owe him nothing.’’ She had thus far escaped the anguish of being brought face to face with her past by the very man whose love compelled her to forget it. And she did not dare to close his lips, or to confess all to him, terrified by what she had just learnt, by that strong bond of friendship and gratitude which had united her two lovers. She listened to William’s despair, as she would have listened to the threatening roar of a wave which was rushing towards her to swallow her up. Motionless and silent, her impassiveness was remarkable. She felt that her only sensation was one of anger. James’s death irritated her. She had at first felt a sort of dull pang, and then she had revolted as she saw that his memory could not fade from her mind. By what right, since he was dead, did he come to disturb her peace?

      William was still holding out his arms to her, and repeating: “My poor Madeleine, console me — You are the only one left to me in the world.”

      Console him for James’s death; it seemed ridiculous and cruel to her. She was obliged to take him in her arms again, and dry the tears which he was shedding for her first lover. The strange part she was acting at this moment, would have made her weep too, could she have found tears. She was truly unfeeling and pitiless; no regret, no tenderness for him whom she had loved, nothing but a secret irritation at William’s grief. She was still the daughter of Férat the workman.

      “He loved him more than he does me,” she thought; “he would cast me off if I were to declare what I think.”

      Then, for the sake of saying something, prompted too by bitter curiosity, she asked in a brief tone, how he had met with his death?

      Then William told her how. having to wait at his banker’s he had mechanically taken up a newspaper. His eyes had fallen on a paragraph which announced the wreck of the frigate Prophet which had been caught in a gale on nearing the Cape. The vessel had been dashed to pieces on the rocks and not a man had been saved. James, who was going out to Cochin China on this steamer, did not even repose in a grave where his friends could go to pray for him. The news was officially confirmed.

      When the anguish of the lovers was allayed, during the night that followed, Madeleine meditated more calmly on the unexpected events of the day. Her anger had gone, and she felt herself dejected and sad. Had she heard of James’s death under other circumstances, no doubt she would have had a choking sensation in her throat and the tears would have come. Now, alone in the recess where the bed stood, at the sound of the fitful breathing of her lover who was sleeping the heavy sleep of the wretched, she thought of him who was dead, of the corpse rolled and beaten against the rocks by the waves. Perhaps, as he had fallen into the sea, he had uttered her name. She remembered bow one day he had cut himself rather severely, in the Rue Soufflot, and how she had nearly fainted at the sight of the blood trickling along his hand. She loved him then, she would have sat up with him for months to rescue him from an illness. And now he was drowned, and she was feeling angry with him. Yet he had not become so indifferent to her as all that; she had him still, on the contrary, always in her breast, in every member; he had such hold on her that she thought she could feel his breath on her face. Then she felt the quiver which thrilled her in the old days, when the young fellow wound his arms round her body. She felt an inexpressible pang, as if a part of her being had been torn away from her. She began to weep, burying her head in the pillow, so that William might not hear. All her woman’s weakness had come back to her; it seemed to her that she was more alone than ever in the world.

      This crisis lasted for a long time. Madeleine prolonged it involuntarily as she called to mind the days of James’s love; at each touching detail which came back to her from the past, she became more distressed, and she reproached herself with her petulant indifference during the day, as if it had been a crime. William himself, had he known her history, would have told her to fall on her knees and weep with him. She clasped her hands, she asked pardon of him who was dead, of him whom she evoked, of him whose cries of agony she fancied she could hear mingled with the roaring of the sea.

      A violent desire suddenly seized her. She made no effort to struggle СКАЧАТЬ